Whaddya Do?

Shoo-wee!! I have been one busy lady this month, I tell ya what. “Busy doing what?,” you ask. Working mostly. “What do you do?,” you ask. Well, it's kind of hard to explain (and you sure do ask a lot of questions), but I'll try...

For simplicity's sake, I usually just tell people that I'm a therapist, which is true, but it really doesn't explain all that I do. I'll start by saying that I'm a Licensed Master Social Worker and a clinical social worker, but not a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. (That's a topic for a whole 'nother day.) Primarily, I direct a program that helps families deal with behavior problems in preschool-age children. (Kind of like the Super Nanny.) With that program, I sometimes go out to schools or daycares, too, but mostly I work directly with families at the center. In addition to that, I do some part-time work at a community mental health center, primarily doing new-client intakes but also some therapy, though I've temporarily stopped taking new therapy patients. On top of all that, I've taken on a temporary part-time job doing in-home crisis counseling with disaster survivors. And, I'm preparing to take on a fourth job doing counseling on some Saturdays.

Yes, it can get pretty complicated trying to explain what I do, and most of my friends and family members still have no idea what I do for a living, other than, “I think she works for the state.” (I do not work for the state, by the way.) I'm pretty sure even my husband doesn't fully understand it all. It's okay; it adds to my mystique.

A lot of people just assume I'm a teacher. I've stopped trying to correct them. Usually, conversations go something like this:

“So, what do you do?”

“I'm a therapist.”

“What kind of therapist? A physical therapist?”

“No, a counselor.”

“Is that like a teacher?”

“Not really.”

“Do you work with kids?”

“Yes, sometimes. I usually do counseling with adults, but I also work in a program that helps parents deal with their kids' problem behaviors, and I sometimes work directly with the kids.”

“So it's like being a teacher?”

“Mmm, not exactly...”

“Yeah, I could tell you were some kind of teacher. So, do you like being a teacher?”

“Yeah. I like it just fine.”

Sometimes, rather than tell people that I'm a therapist, I say that I'm a social worker, but then I usually end up trying to explain that I don't work for the department of children's services, and I don't take people's kids away.

The other risk I take when I tell people what I do for a living is that they want to start telling me right away about their problems. “Oh, you're a therapist? That's nice. You know, I never really had a good relationship with my father. It all started when I was about six years old...”

I'm considering coming up with a faux profession that everybody understands, but no one finds interesting enough to talk about. Perhaps I'll start telling everyone that I sell life insurance. Yeah, scratch all that stuff I said before. I'm a life insurance salesperson.